Journal: Future Hotspots?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Military
DefDog Recommends...

Forecast 2011: Conflict Hotspots

23 December 2010

Protestor with face mask walks past street fire and crowds of other protestors, courtesy of Faramarz Hashemi/flickrPolitical hotzones 2011?

Where in the world will conflict flare in the new year? This special, expanded edition of ISN Insights examines three hotzones beyond the headlines: Pakistan, Tajikistan and the Northern Caucasus.


This special ISN Insights package contains the following content, easily navigated along the tab structure above – or via the hyperlinks below:

A 2011 Pakistani political forecast by Gregory Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association, who predicts a watershed year ahead for the Islamic Republic.

A look forward to the potential for further proliferation of terrorist activity in the North Caucasus – and how Russia should address it by Simon Saradzhyan, research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.

A close examination of Tajikistan's make-or-break year ahead by John CK Daly, non-resident fellow at the Johns Hopkins Central Asia-Caucasus Institute.

See Also:

Review: Zones of Conflict–An Atlas of Future Wars

Review: The Water Atlas–A Unique Visual Analysis of the World’s Most Critical Resource

Journal: Covert War in Pakistan–Lessons Not Learned

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military
Thomas Leo Briggs

Something caught my eye while reading a Slate item written by Tom Scocca and posted on December 20, 2010, “Two Ways of Looking at Our Covert War in Pakistan.”

Mr. Scocca wrote:

“There are diplomatic tensions because we are fighting a full-on undeclared war on the territory of a country with which we are an ally, using covert agents as the commanding officers”.

So what’s new?  Didn’t we fight a full-on undeclared war on the territory of Laos from about 1961 to 1973?  Wasn’t Laos an ally while trying to maintain the fig-leaf of neutrality?  Wasn’t the United States government using ‘covert agents as commanding officers’?

Moreover the New York Times published an article by Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins the same day titled “U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan”.

In particular I noticed the following that Mazzetti and Filkins attributed to senior military commanders in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Journal: Covert War in Pakistan–Lessons Not Learned”

Journal: History is repeating itself in Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

History is repeating itself in Afghanistan

One hears again and again Afghans say that the Taliban may not be liked but that the US is distrusted, even hated

Patrick Cockburn – The Independent  18/12/10

During the mid-1960s, America's goal during a crucial stage in the Vietnam war was to defeat the enemy militarily. But it had no realistic political strategy to underpin the goal, and it was this which ultimately led to failure.

America's strategy in Afghanistan is now suffering from a similar weakness. Barack Obama made the edgy claim this week that the US army is stabilising the military situation, but neither he nor his national security advisers show any signs of understanding the speed at which, politically, the US is losing ground.

Again and again in Kabul one hears Afghans say that the Taliban may not be liked, but that the Afghan government and its US allies are increasingly distrusted, even hated, by the mass of the population.

Journal: 12,000+ Killed in Mexican-American Drug War

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

30,000 killed in Mexico’s drug violence since 2006 (AP)

Mexico said Thursday that more than 30,000 people have been killed in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against cartels in late 2006.

The government said the violent La Familia cartel in western Mexico has been “systematically weakened” by recent arrests and deaths of leading members of the gang.

More than 12,000 killed in Mexican drug war this year, officials say (Los Angeles Times)

Forensic workers carry a body inside a body bag that was found at a clandestine grave in the town of Asencion, near the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Saturday Dec. 11, 2010. At least 5 bodies have been found in three separate clandestine graves found in the site. (AP Photo/Raymundo Ruiz)

Phi Beta Iota: Both Mexico and the USA are “unintelligent” countries lacking in strategic analytics able to clearly demonstrate “cause and effect.”  If they were “smart nations” as we have been advocating since 1995, marijuana would have been legalized long ago, corruption among local officials squelched, pay and training for the police substantially increased….and so on.  Everything is connected.  For example, the weapons do not really come from US handgun stores–they come from the Guatemalan military that sells entire shipments of “old” weapons provided to the US, and then tells the US the weapons were destroyed.  The serial numbers on the captured weapons tell the truth.  Until nations learn to think honestly and holistically, any single flaw can be fatal, and multiple flaws will interact in unanticipated and increasingly costly ways.  In the USA, crime runs from the border to Wall Street, where drug money laundering has long been known to be a major source of liquidity.  Politicians in both countries are paid to be anemic in their thinking and ineffective in their duty to the public.  Under these circumstances, neither law enforcement nor the military can be effective.  Integrity is the missing factor.

Obama’s March to Folly: The Myth of Liberal Intervention & the Arrogance of Ignorance

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off

Weekend Edition
December 17 – 19, 2010

The Myth of Liberal Intervention and the Arrogance of Ignorance

Obama's March to Folly

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

In a recent opinion piece, “Kosovo and the Myth of Liberal Intervention,” Neil Clark in the Guardian on 15 December gave the reader a good summary of the some of the myths surrounding the Kosovo war, although he helped to perpetuate one myth, namely that the so-called genocide of Kosovar Albanians by the Serbs could be as high as 10,000. While Clark fudged the issue by using a range of 2,000-10,000, the fact remains that examination of mass burial sites by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) exhumed 2,788 bodies in Kosovo, some of whom were undoubtably Serbs; nor could the ICTY distinguish how many of these bodies were victims of war crimes or were the unintended detritus of NATO's “precision” bombing. The number of 10,000 was a face-saving, last-ditch, “statistical” estimate produced by the US State Department (its earlier estimates were far higher), which had a vested interest in proving the genocide it claimed Serbia had committed as a justification for NATO's “humanitarian” bombing campaign. The estimate of 10,000 was based on dubious (to put it charitably) statistical methods for estimating the number of bodies the State Department said existed but could not find — once illustrating government's propensity to confuse the a priori with the a posteriori

Continue reading “Obama's March to Folly: The Myth of Liberal Intervention & the Arrogance of Ignorance”

Journal: Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
DefDog Recommends...

Intel Reports Reveal Grim Afghan War Outlook

President Barack Obama's Afghanistan war plans took two major hits this week: First, his longtime adviser and chief diplomat in the region, Richard Holbrooke, passed away unexpectedly. Now, two classified intelligence reports, one each on Afghanistan and Pakistan and intended for congressional committees, had their contents leaked to The New York Times and their findings are not good.

Letter from Afghan experts to Barack Obama

The full text of the open letter from Afghanistan experts to President Barack Obama.

See Also:

Journal: Appeal to Obama on Afghanistan

All Phi Beta Iota Hits on Afghanistan